Ok, so first blog.... what to write...

We arrived in Beijing Tuesday morning, sussed out the subway quite easily and found our way to the Sunrise Hostel trying not to get run over by cars, rickshaws and cyclists. They have zebra crossings here but i think these must just be for show, i read that you are supposed to have a confident walk to cross in front of traffic on zebra crossings... we are working on that :/ Next we wandered around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (an extremely large museum based in the old Emporer residence). I had imagined more of Beijing to be in a traditional style but this is not so, alot of Beijing has been re-generated to show the western world how good it is. There is quite a lot of haze/smog here which is a shame, so much so that you can not see the tops of the tallest buildings sometimes. We have had a few thunder storms whilst being here, the hostel staff are lovely and when they saw us venturing out into the rain they gave us umbrellas to borrow...the chinese use umbrellas come rain or shine. I have also learnt in China that it is acceptable to randomly sing in public or walk around clapping your hands. Brilliant!

We took a tour to the Great Wall yesterday, it was in a hilly area north of Beijing and although the chair lift on the way up was a little scary the wall was amazing, i wouldn't ever want to run a marathon on it though - too hard, lots of steps and the wall slopes to one side for drainage....any how it was a good work out for the leggies. We were impressed to see the amount of ladies on the wall wearing heals! Go them!

Last night we went to the night food market this is where the food is really wierd!! Star fish, snake, shark, whole pigeon, sheeps penis & testicles, chicken hearts all nicely served on a skewer and in most cases cooked to order in front of you - i have many photos!!. We have tried a few odd things since being here. Such as donkey (very nice!!) one night and at the market we tried snake - it's simular to squid although maybe a little more chewy and with all the spices on it we couldn't really tell what the snake meat tasted like.

Later today we will catch a sleeper train to Xi'an so plan to go to some more parks in Beijing and hopefully see some folks doing Tai chi or some walking backwards - part of ying and yang.

Speak soon,

Helena & Andrew xx